ACP-420 study guide
ACP-420 · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
ACP-420 is Atlassian's professional-level certification for people who administer Jira projects in Jira Cloud, as distinct from administering the whole instance. It suits project administrators, team leads and scrum masters with configuration duties, and consultants who set up and maintain projects for other people. The ACP-420 study guide has 9 sections and about 2,849 words.
01Project creation, project types, and project-level configuration
Jira Cloud offers two project models, and almost every question in this domain hinges on telling them apart. Company-managed projects (formerly classic) are built on shared schemes: workflow scheme, issue type scheme, field configuration scheme, screen scheme, permission scheme and notification scheme, all maintained centrally by an administrator.
300 words, about 2 min02Issue types, schemes, and issue type schemes
Issue types classify work and drive which workflow, screen scheme and field configuration apply. The standard hierarchy is Epic → Story/Task/Bug → Subtask, although which type sits at the epic and subtask levels is configurable.
346 words, about 2 min03Workflows, workflow schemes, and transitions
A workflow is a set of statuses joined by transitions. Each transition can carry a screen (what the user fills in), a condition (who may execute it - conditions remove the button), a validator (input that must be valid - an error blocks the transition), and post functions (side effects that run after success: setting resolution, assigning, updating a field, firing events).
312 words, about 2 min04Fields, field configuration, and screen schemes
Custom fields are created globally and have a type (text, select, date, user picker, number and so on). A field can have multiple contexts , each scoping it to specific projects and issue types and, for option-based fields, holding its own option list.
317 words, about 2 min05Permissions, permission schemes, and issue security
Permissions in Jira Cloud operate at three levels, and questions usually test which level applies. Global permissions (administer Jira, create projects, browse users, manage groups) sit outside any project.
332 words, about 2 min06Project roles, groups, and team access management
Access is granted through two different containers. Groups are global objects maintained by Jira administrators; membership changes are organisation-wide and take effect wherever the group is granted a permission, role or filter share.
306 words, about 2 min07Agile boards, backlog, and sprint configuration
A board is a view defined by a saved filter plus board configuration. The filter's JQL determines which issues can ever appear; the board's columns map statuses to columns, and any issue whose status is not mapped falls into an unmapped or no-column area.
329 words, about 2 min08Dashboards, filters, and reporting for projects
Filters are saved JQL queries. They can be favourited, shared with a project, a group or everyone, and subscribed to for scheduled email delivery.
298 words, about 1 min09Project administration practices and troubleshooting
Good project administration is mostly about standardisation and controlled change. Build projects from templates, reuse shared schemes rather than cloning configuration per project, adopt naming conventions and project categories so projects can be found, and delegate day-to-day work through the Administer Projects permission instead of global administration.
309 words, about 2 min